Noah Filipiak is the founding pastor of Crossroads Church in Lansing, MI. The Road Blog offers Noah’s reflections on recent Crossroads sermons and general thoughts on theological topics, current events, sports, and various wisecracks.

Category Archives: Nerd Stuff

I saw the new Captain America movie last night and have to say I was a little disappointed. When I first saw the previews my expectations were fairly low, but then enough of my friends talked it up and convinced me it was a great movie, which is what led me to go see it in the first place (as I’m typically too cheap to go the theaters — why pay for theaters when there is the always free public library DVD rentals???)

Captain America wasn’t the worst movie ever, it just wasn’t believable (yes, X-Men is believable to me), it didn’t pull me in, was too hokey, and the bad guys had way too bad of aim…plus, what’s the deal with the same actor playing both Captain America & The Human Torch??? What happens when the Avengers team up in a movie with the Fantastic Four??? Reflecting on this movie, I realized a strange irony that I love watching comic book movies as a genre, but overall there are more bad ones out there than good ones. I decided to rank my best and worst, let me know what you think:

First, some disclaimers:

This is difficult since some of these are distant memories

The multiple sequels get a bit confusing as to which one was which

I’m not including movies from my childhood and earlier (i.e. any Batman prior to Christian Bale’s rendition, etc.)

In general for anything comic related: Marvel rocks, DC is lame, no arguments. Oh yeah, and Superman is the worst superhero of all-time from a creative idea standpoint. Surprisingly the new Batman movies defy this general DC rule.

No, I have not seen Thor, shame on me I know. I boycotted it in theaters because I’ve always thought it lame of Marvel to have to steal from Norse mythology to create a character. You are the people who created Venom, Nightcrawler, and Galactus, you do not need to steal characters from other people’s creativity. Will see it on video.

THE BEST:

X-Men 3: The Last Stand – A.) It has Colossus in it, best superhero of all time, B.) I’m a sucker for movies with multiple heroes/characters, C.) The X-Men / mutant plot is the best superhero plot in existence

Batman: The Dark Knight – As far as artistic quality of movie, better than X-Men, gets 2nd place as it’s not one I want to re-watch multiple times.

Ironman – Quality movie, pulls me in, re-watchable

Batman Begins – The first changeup in superhero genre that was able to pull it off with extreme success.

Spiderman trilogy – Had to give Spidey some love in the top 5. The movies matched the hype, which is difficult.

Honorable Mention: X-Men First Class (would’ve been top 5 had they not told me Xavier had hair when he got paralyzed, contrary to X-Men 3‘s take on it –get this right folks), X-Men 1 & 2, Wolverine: Origins, The Incredible Hulk starring Ed Norton, Ironman 2

Notable Movies I have not seen, some very likely would have made the “worst” list: Thor, Hellboy, Blade, Ghost Rider (definitely would have made worst list), Elektra (see Ghost Rider), The Punisher, Green Lantern (see Elektra + he’s DC’s sad sad sad attempt to have a 3rd relevant superhero – just because you’re a Subway happy meal toy, does not mean that you have arrived)

THE WORST:

(the worst movie is…) The Incredible Hulk that starred Eric Bana. I literally tried watching this movie in 3 separate chunks, all of which I turned off from pain and boredom.

Green Hornet – Seth Rogan wasn’t even funny. Another praise for the existence of the library: you can watch a movie like this for free and not feel like you just got fleeced.

Daredevil – It’s been a while. I’ve forgotten exactly why it was bad, which is a good thing for me.

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Both Fantastic Four movies – see Spiderman above for the opposite description of these busts